Saturday, 28 February 2015

After a prompt by someone on IRC this week I decided to try to get my Gotek Floppy Drive Emulator working on my recently purchased Amiga 1000.

As I suspected before I started with this little mini project - there would be some tricks to get it working on an Amiga 1000 due to the need for the Kickstart disk before anything else could happen.

As regular readers of my blog would probably remember, last year I bought the Gotek Floppy Drive emulator and tried it out on my Amiga 600. That blog entry is here if you want to review it first as I cover the functionality of the Gotek in much more detail than I will here.

So, can I get it to work in the Amiga 1000?

To start with, I took off the case, which marks the first time I have opened the Amiga 1000 since I got it. Once open I took a look at the case cover inside, and it does have all the signatures on it as I had seen in pictures elsewhere! I was glad to see it (All photos in this entry can be clicked to be expanded):

Closer view of the signatures:

Jay Miner's signature and his dog Mitchy paw print are there too, of course:

Looking at the Amiga 1000 internals, it has a big protective cover, much like the Amiga 1200 had when bought new. Just like that cover this one was also a pain to remove - lots of screws:

Eventually though I got the cover off, exposing the main Amiga 1000 motherboard:

Some close up shots of the chips on the motherboard:

The inside is surprisingly clean considering it's age - it is 30 years old! The next close up shows the 68000 CPU, floppy drive cable and power cable.

Before we can connect the Gotek Floppy Drive Emulator to the Amiga 1000 though I have had to do some things first. Namely, copy the Amiga 1000 specific Kickstart 1.3 disk (ADF format) and Workbench 1.3 Disk (ADF format) to the Gotek USB stick.

As discussed in my previous blog post on the Gotek, there is a selector.adf program on position 000 of the Gotek which enables you to select disks to assign to each slot on the Gotek. However, this selector.df needs the Kickstart to be loaded first on the Amiga 1000.

This means we need to assign the Kickstart 1.3 ADF on the Gotek using selector.adf to do that.

However, this is not possible to do on the Amiga 1000 itself because once I connect the Gotek and disconnect the floppy drive, there is no way to load the kickstart disk needed to then load the selector.ADF!!

Enter my trusty Amiga 600 to save the day. I connected the Gotek to it first so I could configure the Selector.adf on it to use the Kickstart 1.3 ADF in Slot 001, then save it:

In case you are curious, in this shot of the selector.df on the Amiga 600 there is also the external scan doubler I use on the Amiga 1000:

As you can see below I have now assigned Kickstart 1.3 ADF in Slot 001, ready:

With that now done, I can now unplug the Gotek from the Amiga 600 - I no longer need the Amiga 600. I then connect the Gotek to the Amiga 1000 floppy drive cable and power as below:

Another view of the connection:

I make sure Slot 001 is selected and power on the Amiga 1000:

It automatically boots the kickstart 1.3 ADF from the Gotek and the next prompt I see is the Workbench 1.3 insert disk screen - fantastic - it works!

I then selected Slot 002 on the Gotek to boot Workbench 1.3 ADF which works well also:

Exciting stuff. I reboot ready for the next test:

I run a classic Amiga demo ADF from a different slot (003) on the Gotek - Micro Concept by Crusaders - a great music disk:

Some more demo ADF tests followed - how fantastic not to have to use floppy disks any more on the Amiga 1000!

Having established the Gotek works great on the Amiga 1000, I next needed to work out a way to keep it connected and still have the option to go back to the original floppy drive if I ever want to.

I found a longer Amiga floppy drive cable I had spare and ran it from the internal Amiga 1000 floppy drive connector outside through the right hand expansion port. I then used an external molex power source (used for powering IDE/SATA hard disks for USB connection) and used a molex to floppy drive power connector splitter.

This means the internal floppy drive is no longer functional - but I can always reconnect it again if need be.

This external setup is not perfect I know, but does allow me to put the case back on the Amiga 1000 and keep things reasonably tidy - I have no intention of hacking up the case to make it fit inside:

After I put my 512k expansion card back into the right hand side expansion bay, I found it performs a useful role of keeping the Gotek in position on top of the Amiga 1000, and also stops it moving around when using the buttons on the front of it:

And here is the Amiga 1000 all reassembled again, with the Gotek running and having just booted the Kickstart 1.3 ADF again:

I think this is a great addition to the Amiga 1000 and it will stay in place from now on:

I also tested some games by changing the Slot to 000 to use the selector.df to assign some of the many games I have on the USB stick to various slots on the Gotek:

I then reboot and select the Slot I want using the buttons on the front of the Gotek - here is R-Type booted up from the Gotek:

Katakis works great too:

Having the Gotek on the Amiga 1000 makes great sense!

After trying it on the Amiga 600 last year I couldn't see a use for it given I had a hard disk and accelerators, etc. On the Amiga 1000 it fits well, and works great! Recommended!

Friday, 27 February 2015

Today I wanted to take a quick look at the recently released game Quartet for AmigaOS4.1 on the AmigaOne X1000.

Quartet is a game written by Photon Storm originally and ported to AmigaOS4.1 by Nick "root" Sommer. It is the first third party game released through AmiBoing (EntwicklerX) using their online highscore table structures.

The game is free to download. (the original version is still available for a small cost for iOS on Apple's App Store)

Once downloaded an extracted you will see the following Quartet folder:

The nfo.txt file doesn't contain any information about the game other than some credits, so let's dive in!

When you run Quartet it immediately prompts you for your AmiBoing credentials to register your highscores on the AmiBoing server, and to download the latest high scores from other people playing the game from around the world. You can register a profile at amiboing.de

Note that the AmiBoing login here requires you to press Enter after each field is entered in:

You can click the option at the bottom to login in offline mode if you prefer it, or don't have an Amiboing profile yet.

Soon after the Quartet title screen appears:

From the main menu you can turn off the Music and sound effects and view the Credits:

The Highscore table is also on the Main Menu as an option:

Helpfully there is a How to Play option that shows you how to get started with the game:

Basically you are trying to form complete faces in each of the 4 squares by positioning pieces presented to you in the middle square into one of the available boxes.

Each piece fits in top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right positions within each square. If you put two pieces that are top left in the same square, you lose a life.

If you get all 4 face pieces within a square, you get a score for forming a "Face". If you can match 4 pieces of the same type then you get a much larger score for getting a "Full Face"

You have 6 lives to start with, but trust me when I say that they don't last long!

When the game begins slowly and gets faster and faster as you get more Faces completed - quick response time is the key to this game:

Given the fast nature of this game it is nice that the programmer included a Pause option!

Game Over comes quickly, and often in this game as you learn the ropes. It is quite addictive though, and I had to keep trying!

I bought the expansion card module from Ebay - it was AUD$50 from memory.

(just realised that was a terrible pun after writing it - sorry!)

The seller packed it very well indeed.

Here is a closer look at the expansion plugged in and running - it was a relief that it worked:

As you can see it connects to the Amiga 1000 right hand side expansion connector port, which is covered by a plastic cover you can see on the desk below the installed expansion card.

The memory card has a green light to show it is on - plus it also has a red flashing light whenever it is used too! I am a little curious about why it needs that! Seems like overkill but at least I know it works!

I booted up a v1.3 kickstart disk and then the Amiga Workbench 1.3 disk to show the extra memory:

Excellent! Now I can run games and demos that need a 1MB Amiga to run - such as the TRSI Wicked Sensation demo as shown below:

Before the upgrade this screen said I needed 1MB memory to run the demo and stopped. Now it shows my new memory expansion and chip memory totals 1MB and then demo now runs:

Here is some screenshots from the demo running:

I know having 1MB on an Amiga is not such a big thing, but finding a suitable 512k external expansion card for an Amiga 1000 is not as easy as it used to be! I am very glad to have it on my Amiga 1000!

I have ordered an Indivision ECS adapter card for my Amiga 1000 too, and look forward to trying it when it arrives! Unlike other Amiga models, the Amiga 1000 needs a special adapter card to be able to install a separate Indivision ECS card into it. Initially I will try my Amiga 600 Indivision ECS card in it first to make sure it works! Then I may invest in another Indivision card for the Amiga 1000 to keep permanently.

I have no idea where I can wire the VGA connector to on the rear of the Amiga 1000 case though! One problem at a time I guess! Any suggestions please let me know!

I am also interested in trying the Amiga 1000 Sidecar (PC) expansion if I can get one that works on Australian power (US power is different)...there are quite a few upgrades I can try out on the Amiga 1000 which is great! If any of you have interesting upgrades for the Amiga 1000 that work and you are willing to part with please let me know! :-)